My son is 8-1/2 years old (in 2nd grade) and, after two years of solid reading tutoring, reading a little above grade level. His reading speed is average and his comprehension is average to good depending on the day. Nevertheless, he continues to make fairly consistent reading mistakes. For example, he often substitutes “a” for “the,” “for” for “from” etc. He also can add sounds into a word that are not there. Most of the time his alterations do not change the meaning of the sentence but sometimes they do. I have been fairly consistent in correcting his mistakes, e.g. show me where the “l” is in that word. I am not seeing progress in this one area. Several people have mentioned ‘correction techniques’ in a general way recently. Any specific suggestions? Any and all help will be welcome.
If you haven’t had his vision evaluated by a developmental optometrist, you may want to do so. Sometimes there are minor vision problems that make detail difficult to process, and a bright child will develop a guessing habit to fill in the visual processing gaps.
A game approach that often works wonders when the problem is simply inattention to detail is to award the child one point for every sentence in which all the words were actually decoded (even if incorrectly) and nothing was guessed, and one point to you for every guess. If, for example, the child misreads “a” for “the”, you get one point. You would also get a point if the child forgets to read the “s” at the end of a word. You can jot the points down on a post-it, or just keep track in your head. Some children are so motivated to not let you win that they will start paying attention to detail (even though it is more work), and eventually it will become a habit. It’s important not to penalize a child for incorrectly decoding a word. The point is to get the child to decode every word (even if incorrectly), rather than guess at a word. To do this, you have to be aware of the child’s decoding strategy so you don’t mistake incorrect decoding for a guess.
If you don’t have the book, “Reading Reflex”, you may want to get it. Adding a sound to a word is a very different kind of error and more serious. When there are multiple errors in a sentence, it is often too frustrating to the child (and counter-productive) to correct every single mistake. In this case, you want to choose the most serious errors to correct. Phonological errors (adding or subtracting a sound is a phonological error, as is swapping sounds) are more basic errors and should always be corrected first.
A string of verbal corrections can be very irritating to the child. Sometimes it’s helpful to use a very light pencil and run it lightly under the line as it is read. If a word is mis-read, you circle that word as you go. When the child is finished with the sentence, paragraph, page or whatever, he/she goes back and re-reads the words missed. The key here is to give feedback about the mistakes in a way that alerts the child to the mistakes without being frustrating.
Mary